Slaughterhouse For Monsters
by BlueNeutrino
Summary: Following Loki's defeat at the hands of the Avengers, the Other sends an assassin to punish him for his failure. Meanwhile on Earth, SHIELD have a new situation to be dealing with that somehow links back to events unfolding on Asgard. Full summary inside.
1. Prologue - Tricks and Dreams

_**Slaughterhouse For Monsters**_

**Summary: Following Loki's defeat at the hands of the Avengers, The Other sends an assassin to punish him for his failure. Only one person may escape through the crack in the cosmos leading out of the Chitauri's dimension, but by the time the assassin traverses it, circumstances have changed. In the guise of Odin, Loki now sits on the throne of Asgard, and the balance of power has shifted. Now may be the time for new deals to be made, and Loki has not abandoned his desire for it to be his name the whole world kneels before.**

**A/N: Since "Thor: The Dark World" was released, it's rekindled my love for Loki and made me want to try my hand at writing Avengers fic or anything in the world of MCU, so here we go. Current projections are for this to be roughly 60% Avengers and its comprising franchises, 35% Agents of SHIELD and 5% original, with the characters this mostly focuses on being Loki, Thor, Natasha, Coulson and May.  
**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers/Thor/AoS or anything else Marvel.**

_**Prologue – Tricks and Dreams**_

_He's falling. There's no atmosphere, no air, no gravity…yet somehow he's falling. Space is swallowing him whole, and the fractured colours of the Bifrost are receding into the distance as the cruel tendrils of nebular dust wind their way around him and drag him further into the dark. The absence of pressure in the void makes him gasp for air, and he chokes on the emptiness. There's nothing but a relentless pounding in his head and ice in his veins, threatening to tear him apart…_

_Until after an age he feels solid ground again. Cold, hard rock beneath him, its sturdiness anchoring his feet to the floor while the tidal forces of darkness overhead try to drag him away again. He knows this place. Knows the warped topography of the landscape surrounding him, and knows the names of the things that creep in the flickering shadows._

_A cloaked figure stands before him, and he recognises the masked face that leers at him from beneath the hood, both strangely intangible yet frighteningly real._

_He isn't sure if this is a memory or now._

"_You think you know pain? He will make you long for something sweet as pain." The words are a cruel hiss in his ear; teeth and claws and danger hovering just inches from his soul. The threat is the most honest sentence he's ever heard._

"_Failure!" The word feels like a physical blow as it's spat at him, its sharpness penetrating through his skin. "Liar! You promised us Earth, but brought us death."_

"_I opened the portal!" He growls defiantly back, his voice coming from somewhere strange and not sounding like himself. "It was your invasion forces that failed. I'm not the one responsible for your army's weakness."_

_It's supposed to be an accusation, a taunt, but sounds horribly like begging; an attempt to deflect blame. Why can't he move? He tries to take a step forward, but it seems that all conceivable forces are converging to keep him in place._

"_You underestimated your opponents. It was you who was defeated, Loki Laufeyson," the Other snarls at him. "It was you who lost the Tesseract, and you will be punished for your defeat."_

_"I am the King of Asgard!" Loki shouts, __the words erupting from his mouth in a way that sounds almost manic_. "Ruler of the Nine Realms! You call that defeat? I succeeded without you, and now I have more power than you ever promised me. Look at you. What are you now? Still lurking in the emptiness between dimensions, your numbers decimated, no hope for escape. You're nothing!"

_The momentary silence that succeeds his outburst is chilling. The pause extends for an unpleasantly long time, and then the Other takes a step closer to him. Loki wants to move, torn between wanting to back away and wanting to advance to prove he isn't afraid, but either movement is for some reason impossible._

_The Other comes to a stop just in front of him, eyes hidden but mouth twisted in a cruel expression of mockery. A low, sinister chuckle slips past the coarse grey lips, reverberating through the barren rocks around them. "No, Thor is the rightful King of Asgard. What you are is a fraud. A fake. Your power is built upon an illusion. No one fears or respects your name, Loki. You're nothing but a pathetic failure. How could an abomination like you amount to anything? No matter what tricks you cast, a Frost Giant will never rule Asgard. _You _are _nothing!"

_The last sentence was shouted in his face, the Other's teeth snarling just in front of him, but he heard it in Odin's voice. Immediately following it there was a flash of white light, like a lightning strike, and something suddenly jolted him harshly to rip him from where he was anchored to the ground…_


	2. Intruder

_**Chapter One – Intruder**_

Loki's eyes snapped open. He was lying in bed, gazing up at the canopy overhead where an image of Yggdrasil was woven into the fabric, its threads glimmering faintly in the dark. He noticed his fists were clenched, balled tightly as he clutched at the sheets, but otherwise it seemed he had slept calmly. The only outward evidence of the nightmare was the tension in his muscles and his quickened breathing, which was gradually returning to a normal rate.

The dream wasn't new to him. It hadn't bothered him for a while, but it was one he'd had before, although he'd forgotten how vivid it could be. Still, it was nothing more than a dream. He wouldn't let it shake him, especially not now he was no longer imprisoned and he'd succeeded in assuming control of Asgard. It wasn't worth affording attention to when he had to focus his energies elsewhere, such as keeping the glamour of Odin in place. Sometimes he could maintain it while he slept, although tonight appeared to have thrown him. He shouldn't even be sleeping at all, ideally, if he was to keep everyone believing that he was Odin, although that wasn't always easy. He was still weakened from his near death experience on Svartalfheim - which had been a closer call than planned - and that combined with maintaining the constant illusion was draining. Every few nights he'd order some privacy after daylight hours just so he could grab some brief rest, and it wouldn't do to have nightmares disturbing that. Although it seemed that wasn't something he had much control over.

Letting out a long, slow breath, Loki wondered if maybe getting some air would help. It wasn't as if he needed it to live, but the effect of breathing it could be calming. He tried to sit up, with the intention of heading over to the balcony, but as he did so he felt something sharp prick at his throat, forcing him back down.

He felt a weight shift on the bed beside him, and then a voice hissed from somewhere above his head. "Loki Laufeyson?"

So, there was someone is his room. Someone invisible. Who was holding what felt like a knife to his throat. Well, that was disconcerting.

"Who's asking?" he retorted calmly. "I don't normally hold conversations with thin air."

In response there was a ripple of purple light above him, which flickered and receded as a humanoid form solidified into view. The figure was kneeling over him, holding what he could now see what was some kind of short spear to his throat. It was clad mostly in lightweight armour and its facial features were obscured behind what resembled a Chitauri helmet, but Loki could see some pale grey skin mottled with blue on its neck and in the spaces between its vanbraces and shoulder armour.

"Thanos wishes for you to know your failure will not go unpunished."

Considering the dream he'd just had, that was also disconcerting. The coolness of his reply hid how quickly his mind was working. "Well, if you were planning on killing me in my sleep, waiting until I woke up wasn't a very good idea."

He couldn't see anything behind the mask, but he imagined the creature was snarling at him. "Were you to die in your sleep, your suffering would be inadequate."

"We wouldn't want that," he remarked drily in response to the vicious words, and then the creature growled as it shifted the aim of the spear and jabbed it towards Loki's right shoulder.

It never made contact. Instead the tip sank harmlessly into the mattress, and a brief flash of light glimmered around it as the projection receded. The real Loki rolled off the bed in the opposite direction, hand swiftly reaching under the pillow to grab the knife concealed there, and then turned back to face the creature that had been sent to kill him. "How did you even get in here in the first place? I'll have to have a word with the guards about that."

"Invisibility has its advantages," it replied, before lunging at him with the spear again, which he dodged and then tried to slash at its exposed neck with his own blade, but he was too far away.

"Do you even realise how late you are?" he challenged it, dodging more of its attacks as he realised how ineffective his knife was going to be against the longer ranged weapon. "New York was a year ago. I'm King of Asgard now. You don't want to make an enemy out of me."

That caused it to pause, hesitating mid attack. That opened up an opportunity for Loki to strike back at it, but he held his ground, curious to see what it would it would do next.

"King of Asgard? How?"

"Well, I've managed to make everybody believe that I'm Odin, but the official story is that I'm dead, which does make one wonder why you're attempting to kill a dead man. Where have you been living this past year?"

The helmet was obscuring its facial expressions, although Loki could imagine how pissed off it looked, even if he wasn't too sure what exactly its face looked like.

"There was only a narrow crack left in the universe after the portal was closed, and it has taken me a long time to claw my way through it. I find now that things were not as I was expecting." Its tone sounded curious, and it had lowered its weapon into a less aggressive stance.

Loki shared a similar sense of curiosity, and he lowered his own knife and tilted his head as he examined the creature further. "You're not a Chitauri, are you?"

Its capacity for conventional speech had been indication enough, but other than the helmet and its general form, it didn't much look like a Chitauri either. That made him curious as to what it was and why it had been sent.

"Sending a Chitauri whose life force is linked to the mothership would have been a disadvantage. I may not be a Chitauri, but I shared their fate in their entrapment between the worlds."

He gave it another curious look. "Then what are you?"

It didn't answer. Instead, without warning, it raised the spear and lunged at him again.

Again, he dodged, but seeming to have anticipated this the creature simply discarded the spear and continued moving forward, raising its other hand in which it brandished a blade to slash at Loki's face. Taken by surprise, Loki only just managed to twist out of the way and felt blood trickle down his cheek as it grazed his skin.

Backing away, he glared at it and gritted his teeth. "Now I'm curious. What colour do you bleed?"

It was he who initiated the attack this time, retaliating by jabbing forward at the exposed spots on the creature's upper arms and throat. It parried and counter attacked effectively, but not well enough to prevent a well timed cut from Loki slicing the skin on its right arm. He heard it hiss in pain as it recoiled away, a gold coloured fluid welling up from the cut, and he smirked in satisfaction.

"Do you really think this is wise?" he questioned it, even as it tried to resume its attack. "The world believes Loki is dead, and now I rule Asgard. Whatever you think you can achieve by killing me is nothing compared to what I could give you."

"You have made such promises to us before that you have broken," it snarled, unrelenting in the way it continued to strike at him, and he could feel himself tiring from dodging and blocking the attacks.

"Don't be a fool," he spat at it, "How was anyone to know how powerful the Avengers were, when even they themselves didn't realise? Your people asked me for the Tesseract. The Tesseract is on Asgard. I can still give you what you want, and more."

He hoped that his attempts at reasoning would be successful, and it seemed that they were. The creature paused again, but knowing it could resume at any point Loki kept his weapon raised.

"How?" it asked.

He didn't answer immediately, taking a moment to assess the situation. It seemed like a simple creature, taking orders presumably from Thanos or the Other, which were no doubt to kill him, but could he persuade it of a different course of action? Maybe there was a way to make this situation work for him. "That may require some co-operation from you," he replied cautiously, hoping that the creature was capable of enough independent thought that he could at least discuss this. If not… well, calling the guards in here to take care of it might lead to complications that he'd rather avoid.

It didn't respond straight away, but then replied in a calm but cautious tone to match his, "I'm listening."

"Show me what you look like."

He asked to satisfy his own curiosity more than anything, but after another brief pause the creature complied. It raised a hand to push the helmet upwards off its face to rest on top of its head, and Loki raised an eyebrow as he took in its appearance. It was more humanoid than he'd been expecting, but with greyish skin and deep set eyes, and blotches resembling freckles covering its nose and cheeks. The ridges of its cheekbones were particularly pronounced, and two elongated, almost tusk-like teeth protruded from its bottom lip, which only exaggerated the sinister expression on its face. It was also, if he were to compare with typical human features, unmistakably female. That surprised him, although now that he considered the voice and other aspects of its appearance, that did seem to make sense.

As he cast his gaze over her, amber eyes flashed back at him in a glare. "I am acting on the orders that were given to me, although I will listen to what you propose. So speak."


	3. Contract

**A/N: This was supposed to be a SHIELD chapter, but I'm a little undecided as to what order I'm going to tell all this in to avoid giving stuff away, but at the same time making sure people can follow it. Consequently, there is a slight time skip from the last chapter for the purposes of omitting spoilery information, but the next chapter is going to join Coulson's SHIELD team when that information comes into play.**

_**Chapter Two – Contract**_

His hand had been played. The cards were on the table and his deal proposed. Now he waited for a response; watching her yellow eyes narrow at him as she considered, calculating and mistrusting. It took her a long time to reply, but he was happy to wait. The pause was at least informative, if not exciting. She may have been acting on orders to kill him, but perhaps she was not so simple as a mere drone who blindly followed instructions. If that was the case, then he certainly thought he could find a way to make it work for him.

After a few moments, she fixed him with a curious stare. "You are quite the enigma to me, Loki Laufeyson," she remarked coolly, not commenting on the offer he'd just laid before her. "On the one hand, you're an agent of chaos. You thrive upon disorder and mischief, yet you want the throne of Asgard. You wish to be ruler of the Nine Realms, but rule requires order and law: things contrary to all that a God of Mischief values. So it seems something of a paradox to me that someone of your nature would desire such a position."

It was an interesting observation, and it pleased him that she'd made it. A small smile played on his lips as he considered that a sharp tool would be more useful to him than a blunt instrument, even if it meant keeping it on a tighter leash.

"Power and order are not synonymous. Having the power to rule and the power to wreak havoc are both equally appealing to me, although perhaps the nuances of such privileges are lost on someone more accustomed to taking orders than giving them."

Having not missed the insult, she glared at him. "I may have received orders to kill you, but I accepted them on my own terms. I obey or disobey by my own choice."

"Evidently, or we would not be having this conversation."

Her expression hardened even further at his comment. "No, you'd be screaming and begging for mercy as I tortured you on my ship," she growled menacingly, "Half way across the cosmos and far beyond the help of any of your guards. I needed no orders to know I wanted to kill you slowly."

"Yet here you are discussing this with me," he remarked, unfazed. "It does cast doubt on your convictions."

She drew her lips back slightly in retaliation at the second insult, baring a row of sharp upper teeth just as pointed as those extending up from her lower jaw. It was an obvious sign of aggression, but he deliberately looked unimpressed. "If you offer a way to rectify your failures, I will listen. But fail again, and my wrath will be even more severe."

The threat didn't hold much weight when it seemed like a weak attempt to defend herself from his accusations, and he didn't have the patience for it. "Spare me the melodrama. You've heard my proposal. So tell me, is that enough to persuade you?"

There was another pause in which she continued to stare at him, clearly still thinking it over. "Perhaps," she eventually replied, her tone measured as she waited for more information to consider. "I am still curious: why is it that you want the throne? Is it really all about power? Or is there something else?"

He bristled at the question, and he suddenly met her glare with an equally fierce one of his own. He _was _the King of Asgard and he was going to make sure that people knew _he – Loki – _was the King of Asgard, as was his right. That wasn't something he had to justify to her or to anyone. "It's about taking what is rightfully mine," he snarled at her, sounding angrier than he'd been at any earlier point in the conversation.

"Yes, of course: taking what is rightfully yours by means of deception," she remarked sarcastically. "It can't possibly be satisfying for you: that you finally sit upon the throne of Asgard, yet only because all believe you are Odin."

"Satisfying? No. But for now, satisfactory."

She raised an eyebrow at his response, almost mocking him. "And how were you planning to rectify the situation?"

"Wait around a little longer, and you'll find out."

"Suppose I don't want to wait," she replied, her tone again taking on the implications of a threat as she demanded to be told. The exact details of how he proposed to get Odin out of the picture had been thus far omitted from their conversation, and she thought she'd like to know.

He gazed at her coolly, refusing to be intimidated. "Well then, with your co-operation, we could make it happen sooner."

Yet again, there was a pause. She seemed hesitant to agree to help him, but she was clearly lending it careful consideration. Did she help him secure his position on Asgard's throne under his own name, if it meant he did something to help her? What he was offering would mean making good on his deal of over a year ago, but that didn't mean she was in a position to readily accept it. She wondered what the Other would tell her, if she could take this proposal back to the creature who'd sent her here and ask what she should do. She knew the answer. He'd say to show no mercy. To punish Loki as she'd been ordered, and give no second chances. But fortunately she wasn't a Chitauri with no choice but to obey, and she had her own agenda to serve. "Very well," she said bluntly, having made up her mind. "I accept your terms."

Loki repressed the smirk that was itching to display on his face. Even he didn't accept his terms, and if she truly thought he'd abide by them she was a fool, but this was shaping up to be the most useful turn of events for him since the Convergence. It surprised him almost, how easy it had been to convince her, but then he supposed that assassins like her would work for whoever offered them the best deal.

"Good. Then shall we begin?"


	4. Concealment

**A/N: Here we go at last – the SHIELD chapter! Apologies if it's a little short, I'm currently on my phone, on the bus, on a long drive to the airport with limited internet access and no word counter, but this is the first chance I've had to write anything since finals finished, so I was just desperate to post an update of some sort.**

_**Chapter Three – Concealment**_

_24 miles north of Rovaniemi, Finland_

Snow crunched beneath the tyres as the SUVs crawled over the frozen terrain, the drive rough and uneven as they approached the flat plane of arctic tundra ahead. Several other vehicles had already arrived at the scene, where black, sinister-looking tents and cordons had been erected as SHIELD set up base.

Inside one SUV, Skye rubbed her hands together through her mittens, feeling the chill of the Lappish air as her breath misted in front of her face. "Couldn't we have parked the Bus a little closer?" she said as she reached for the dial to turn up the heating. "You know, instead of driving all this way in the cold."

Ward, sat beside her in the driver's seat, reached to turn it down again. "Closest place to safely land a plane was Rovaniemi Airport. Twenty miles away is the best we could get," he replied, before offering an explanation for keeping the car unheated in the Arctic temperatures. "And you'll want to get used to the cold now, because it'll be even worse when you step outside."

Skye shot him a disgruntled scowl. "Jeez, Ward, I just want a bit of warmth in here, that's all. If I wanted to freeze my ass off I would have hiked."

"Well, you might still get chance to do that," he noted just as the car went over a particularly rough patch of ground, jolting the passengers abruptly before the tyres landed in a ditch. There was a flurry of snow from the wheel spin before the vehicle managed to drag itself forward again.

In the back of the car, Fitzsimmons were still trying to assemble their tech equipment, which was proving difficult when they both were wearing chunky woollen gloves. "You've got to keep the temperature low so we can recalibrate the instruments," Fitz said, further dismissing Skye's attempts to warm the car up, "Which would be easier if we could actually get them to turn on in the first place." He added the last part in aggravation as the touch screen interface refused to respond to his repeated tapping with the evidently faulty touch pads on his gloves.

Exasperated, Simmons snatched it off him. "Use the stylus, Fitz," she said, before doing just that to switch them on and then thrust the controls back at him. He accepted that and the stylus with a slightly embarassed "Well of course that was obvious" sort of look.

"Well, you might want to hurry up with that, since we're here," Ward said, allowing the SUV to roll to a steady stop alongside the other SHIELD vehicles already parked up.

The four of them got out, each of them wrapped in many layers of thick coats and thermal clothing, although they still felt the bitter chill of the outside air sting their faces. Beside them, another SUV pulled to a stop, from which May and Coulson exited.

"Alright, what have we found so far?" Coulson asked to the team of techs and agents surrounding him.

One of the technicians who'd been already present at the scene answered. "We've done a survey of the area for electromagnetic anomalies, and a team from the university detected abnormalities in the electron scatter from the aurora borealis," she explained, "But we still haven't been able to pin down exactly what it is. One of the scientists who detected the phenomenon is on site, if you wanted to question her."

Coulson nodded. "Alright, we can start with that. Fitzsimmons, could you do a secondary scan for anything the university may have missed?"

"Um, we're right on that," Fitz replied.

"But could we maybe just have two more minutes?" Simmons finished. They still weren't fully calibrated.

While the two scientists worked on that, and Coulson and May went to find the other scientist mentioned, Skye looked out at the empty field of snow in front of them, feeling somewhat puzzled. "Um, this was supposed to be a zero-eight-four, right?" she muttered tentatively to Ward.

"Yes, it is," he answered plainly.

"So where is it?"

Ward followed her gaze in staring out across the blank plane, before reaching down to pick up a handful of snow and compacting it into a ball. "It's somewhere out there..." he said as he straightened up again, and then flung the snowball out into the emptyspace before them.

Skye wasn't sure what she'd been expecting - probably just for the cluster of snow to land harmlessly among all the other snow out there - but instead it seemed to impact something mid-air, shattering and exploding apart as if it had hit a pane of glass. Simultaneously, as the snowball disintegrated a ripple seemed to form in the air, a strange optical distortion radiating out from the point of impact. It also triggered a momentary hum to sound out across the tundra, like the buzzing of large electronic equipment.

Briefly, everyone on the SHIELD team turned to watch the peculiar phenomenon for an instant, and then looked at Ward who had triggered it, who looked sheepishly back. There was a pause before Simmons chastised, "Ward, leave the probing of unknown objects to us, thank you," and then she and Fitz finally unleashed their miniature swarm of hover bots to scan whatever it was that was out there.

Everyone returned to their business, and then Skye turned back to Ward again, looking both a little incredulous and excited. "So you're telling me it's invisible?"

"So it would seem," he remarked drily, evidently not sharing Skye's excitement about that fact.

On the far side of SHIELD's camp, Coulson and May were meeting with the scientist who had indirectly detected the strange object in the first place. "Dr. Jaana Kovannen, University of Rovaniemi, Department of Physics and Astronomy," she introduced herself. "I was in the lab last night when I made some strange observations."

"Pleasure to meet you, Dr Kovannen. I'm Agent Coulson, this is Agent May," Coulson introduced the both of them. "If you don't mind, we may have a few questions to ask you about what you discovered."

"Of course," she answered, maintaining her air of politeness but her eyes narrowing slightly. "I'll tell you what I can. I was studing the aurora when I noticed some unusual distortions in the electron paths, almost as if the atmosphere had been breached and something was coming down from the sky. I'll be happy to help you in any way I can, although I must say I wasn't expecting the government to show up over something like this. Especially not the American government."

"SHIELD is an international taskforce," Coulson corrected her. "You'll find we have employees from all over the globe. Would you mind waiting in one of the tents? We'd like to survey the area and then ask you about your findings."

She nodded again, although she was still looking at them suspiciously. "Of course..." she said, before going back inside to where her equipment was set up, although as she left it sounded like she muttered "_Amerikkalainen..." _under her breath.

Coulson turned back to May. "Why is always astrophysicists who stumble across these things?" he remarked as the headed over to where the large invisible object seemed to be.

"Because no-one else thinks to go looking for them," she answered him. "So do we think it's Asgardian?"

"Seems unlikely. I've never known them have the ability to make things invisible before."

"But it probably did come from outer space."

"Yes."

"Which means there's something else out there that's found us."

Her tone sounded ominous, and Coulson understood why, but he wasn't the kind to blow things out of proportion. "Possibly, but let's confirm what it is first. It could just be a harmless asteroid that happens to originate from somewhere in space where everything is invisible."

"That's a very optimistic attitude to take, sir," May said as they came to stand just in front of where the object was supposed to be. An indent in the snow indicated the presence of something on top of it. "Do we have an estimate for how big it is?"

"Based on the pattern in the snow..." Coulson said, looking out over the field, "You could park three trucks in there, easily."

"What about how high?" May asked, reaching forward to place a hand on where the object ought to be. There was a humming again, softer than before, as her hand made contact. Encouraged by that, May brought her other hand to rest on the surface too, feeling its shape and texture as best she could through her gloves. Seeking out ridges and indents, protrusions and lacunas, she brought up one foot to hook into a gap near the ground and then began to climb.

It was an odd sight, seeing her ascend through what appeared to be thin air, with the occasional shimmer in the background every time she hit a new point on the surface. Coulson bit his tongue as she climbed higher, resisting the urge to tell her to be careful. If there was one person on Earth he didn't need to say that to in any situation it was Melinda May, and he knew she wouldn't appreciate it.

Once May was about ten feet above the ground, the near vertical surface she'd been ascending seemed to plateau, and she pulled herself up to stand on what seemed to be a level plane. Coulson looked up at her, floating in mid-air, and she looked back down at him. "This could be the top, or there could be higher parts. I'll have to find out, sir" she said as she took a steady, but confident step forward, feeling for a solid surface beneath her feet before shifting her weight onto it. There was a solid sounding footstep as her snowboot landed on whatever material was beneath her.

As he watched, Coulson felt a drop of icy moisture land on his face, followed by another, and he blinked once or twice as he realised it was beginning to snow. "That could work for us," he muttered to himself as he realised that the object would be much easier to see if it was covered in snow.

It probably also made it more dangerous for May to be up there, but that thought was interrupted by Fitz."Sir!" the engineer was approaching him with tech tablet in hand, looking pleased, "We've got a pretty detailed scan of the object from multiple angles. That should be enough data to let us create a 3D rendering of it."

Pleased with the rapid progress, Coulson smiled. "Good, that should be quicker than waiting for it to snow."

A moment later, however, something happened that took them all by surprise. There was a metallic clanging sound followed by a pneumatic hiss, and then everyone turned to stare at where May was stood on top of the object. At her feet a hatch appeated to have sprung open, a small square of opaqueness against the bulk of transparency, triggered by something she'd stepped on.

"And that should be even quicker," May stated as she stared down the hatch into the depths of whatever they'd unearthed.


End file.
